maybe it was the worse discoverability of groups. at some point google became more about commerce than actually listing information high in their result pages.

maybe it was the worse discoverability of groups. at some point google became more about commerce than actually listing information high in their result pages. if you search on facebook, communities related to specific topics pop up immediately. even whatsapp now shows "popular groups" around certain themes in the app, even though none of your phone contacts is in any such group. and by google not showing forums or blogs (especially new ones) as top results any more (mostly because of pre-llm spam websites) they just didnt get any more users. facebook split up the "advertising" part and the connecting people / groups part, e.g. facebook's search wouldn't show ads. I personally that this lack of friction really pushed social media sites forward, while the rest of the internet got kneecapped by google more and more like a boiling frog.